Abnormally Normal: The Individuals Rebellion of Involution

My earliest school memory is of a teacher reprimanding me: “Why can’t you be more normal like Simon who is so obedient…?” she asked. “I’m not a dog!” I thought, “What demonstrates more intelligence: the student who is doubtful and opinionated or the one who accepts and abides?” Obedience is a quality that is seen so virtuously. Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Darwin, Pasteur, the Wright brothers, and countless other truth-seekers over the centuries were silenced, rejected, persecuted, even executed, not for their vices but for their virtues – the rebellious spirits they had, and the bold daring new truths they presented.

Abnormally Normal Society

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. ~ J Krishnamurti (Think on These Things)

Mystics, healers, introverts, outsiders, and eccentric people have all suffered the shunning of the abnormally normal. From a very young age, through our education, family and cultural environmental conditioning, we are taught what the majority of people believe acceptable and “normal”, knowing nothing else. These seemingly normal people are only judged as being “normal” in comparison to how well adjusted they are to such an abnormally ill society. If the people in our society were truly normal, they would find the state of society untruthful, distasteful and impossible to adjust to. They would choose not to partake in it, to rebel against being normal, resulting in their exile from such a society and labeled Outcasts.

Reaction Is Not Rebellion

Rebellion is not to be confused with a reaction against society. A reaction is unconsciously instantaneous. Our brains move from one extreme to the other to avoid having to deal with progressive change.For example, as a child you ate too much and were overweight, so now you have traumatic memories about your weight and unconsciously react by obsessing over fitness or diets. In your conscious mind you feel that you’ve made a great change when it fact it’s merely a superficial change You’ve gone from thinking about eating all the time to thinking about not eating all the time. However, the topic of fixation is the same: eating. You are still buying into the game and giving food too much importance. Another example of reactionary living can be seen in the Monk. He feels sexual urges, but decides to become a celibate. Yet, in his mind the topic of focus is still the same: sex. “Stop!…don’t think about that, you’re a celibate man now, what you’re doing has a purpose!”

Skinheads, Atheists, and Anarchists are all still slaves of unconscious reaction. They are obsessed with the same idea, and are therefore still part of the extremes game. First there must be a belief in order to disbelieve it. Understandably these people react out of frustration and anger, but they are still acting just as sick and crazy as the society they live in.

A rebel is different from these people. The rebel is the person who don’t react against society, but who understand the whole game of extremes and simply chooses to slip out of it. The games society plays become irrelevant to them; they are neither against nor for anything. This is the beauty of their rebellion: the rebel’s freedom. To the rebellious person, action is good but reaction is bad. They realize that when we unconsciously react, somebody else has the control over us. In other words, people can manipulate you in whatever way they like, so that they continue to have the power over you. We experience and see this behavior everywhere: somebody comes and insults you and you instantly react and become angry. But the truth is, we rarely realize that the other person has control over our happiness or unhappiness when we behave this way.

Individual Rebellion of Involution

Individual rebellion is not a social revolution – a revolutionary is an extremist as well. Revolution requires a crowd, but rebellion only requires an individual. The rebellious individual changes himself. He doesn’t care about changing the rules, regulations and power structures of society. Rather, he simply manages to change his own being, to experience a mental and spiritual rebirth of a new person inside of himself, an awakening of Involution.

Anyone who wants to rebel in this manner will find their path is turbulent. To rebel requires the destruction of your former self, of your former ideas, assumptions and beliefs about yourself. Once you have found freedom from your old self, you will have the freedom and room to create Involution and reconstruct yourself entirely. If every person decides to individually rebel against the sickness and emptiness in society, a revolution will evolve.

The first step is to realize that you are not part of a collective. A Social Collective is simply a man-made idea, and a symbolic word.

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I have been planning to rebel for a while now, pondering through it in my solitude but there’s one obstacle I have encountered:

I identify as in INFP (55% Feeling, 45% Thinking)

This due to the fact that I hate conflict, sometimes drives me crazy, even when a situation requires justice I am more inclined to mercy over justice.

To drive the point home, I fear being rejected and being an outcast most especially to my mother who has cared for me for so long and indirectly wants me to not rebel, how do you deal with such two opposing forces? Any advice you can give?

I am a great deal chronologically older (this time around), than you or Alethia Luna. In junior high school (middle school) girls took cooking and sewing classes. I had no interest in these subjects. My mother and grandmother made good grades with my sewing class projects. When I married I cooked, but I didn’t enjoy it. Post divorce I announced I was no longer cooking or cleaning. When I became pregnant, between husbands,(like Gloria Steinem I didn’t breed in captivity), everyone said, “aha, now you’re going to have to cook and clean!” I responded, no, the baby’s environment will of course be clean, and I will breastfeed the baby, then there’s baby foods, and food from the frozen food trees.” When my soulmate came along, I informed him of my statement and he said, “that’s all right, you have other attributes”. I simply never did like the attitude that because a woman is a woman, that she automatically has these skills However, I enjoy cooking occasionally for friends. Donated my sewing machine long ago. There is a relevant Jethro Tull song called,” On the Inside”. Also, I attended Santa Monica college when only wearing dresses and skirts were allowed. I worked as a model, and in my downtime, when I attended class, I wore jeans and a Navy sweater. One afternoon, on campus, A woman janitor told me I couldn’t wear jeans. I did as always, listened, and continued happily on my path ever since. I’ve rebelled in other areas, too numerous to mention. My family have all been deceased for quite a while so it makes rebellion run smoothly, although, of course, I would have dealt with their objections. As always, thank you for the great article! Do you think being a breech birth has anything to do with it? (being funny!)

The other day I thought to myslef that I was going through a midlife crisis (I’m 38) and I googled midlife crisis. I found a wonderful article about rather than thinking about it as a midlife crisis, to view it as a midlife transformation.

That is what i’m now doing.

Back to this article…

This is my fav section of this article ~

To rebel requires the destruction of your former self, of your former ideas, assumptions and beliefs about yourself. Once you have found freedom from your old self, you will have the freedom and room to create Involution and reconstruct yourself entirely.

I feel that this is what I’m doing right now as I transform (& rebel against what society wants me to think and do).

That is a wonderful outlook, to see our midlife crises as an opportunity for transformation. Perhaps it’s nature’s way of telling us that we need to reevaluate our existence, our current paths and if they aren’t fulfilling us in every way to do something about it.

Most people are lemmings in society. Myself to a large part included. Some stats say eighty percent of Americans dislike their jobs. I think that’s a good indicator on why so many are rebellion oriented deep at heart. I do not know one person who is really doing what they want to in life, not even one. Thankfully, I will be in a position to leave the rat race forever. Sadly, it comes down to money as usual. How much one can afford to do your own thing. Always liked the rebels, the southern ” Rebs ” during the war too !

Indeed most people don’t live fully aware of themselves and their surroundings, it’s large an influence of how social conditioning. Old mystics claimed most of us live in a state of sleep, sure we are awake compared to unconscious sleep, but this ‘sleep’ is an awake one, one where we go through the motions of things, lost and identifying ourselves in our thoughts or emotions without allowing the present moment to fully absorb us into it.

Rebellion is a natural reaction, often it’s people feel they are rebelling against society, but they end up misguidedly rebelling against themselves, by going to extremes and self destructive paths.

Money is the key to freedom, my solution was to minimize what my “essentials” were, when you truly honestly go through what it is you actually need to live a happy life, you’ll find most of the things you own and desire are over-kill.

Love love love this. :)
It can be tricky to balance enough conformity to society so that you can exploit the benefits and get the things you need to best function in society, and yet not submit totally and carve out your own path and have the inner strength and will to travel that path regardless of what other conforming people might think and say (even if they’re your closest friends and relatives…).
I remember an English teacher told me to not read ahead and keep at the same pace as the other kids in the reading group. … I didn’t listen and found my own compromise. :P I read ahead and yet only talked about what the other kids had read up to so I wouldn’t spoil them. :P
Anyone else get the utter fallacy that mathematics can be for its so much a man-made subject that “claims” its the language of the universe? x_x For some reason the more I LEARN and debate and investigate, the oddness comes about of the utter dependency and worshipping of “pure mathematics” as well as money the “golden empty idol/god”. E^e
My engineering parents don’t understand why their artist son thinks math as a basis can be somewhat good tool but overreaches when trying to explain the complicated and convoluted and MESSY reality and nature. xP Anyways that’s just my thought on the matter. :)
But yeah…Yeesh happily being myself as much as I can be without being too obvious about it and being shot down for that. Tricky balance but hey if there is a way to be oneself and yet live without beating, threats, prosecution, execution, being killed, etc, then I’ll do my best to find that narrow line. :) Be oneself and yet live a whole life and long life too. xD

Does the nickname come from Indigo Children by any chance? It’s kind of funny how this society works. At the beginning as you’re growing up, they teach us to be similar to other kids. Uniforms in school, everyone learns the exam same information in school (our education basically is teaching everyone introduction courses to becoming a teacher…not cultivate our own intellectual strengths), obey your teachers, obey your parents. But then once you grow up, the society starts rewarding and valuing people who’ve come up with innovative ideas, who are different (from Lady Gaga to Einstein, Steve Jobs or Nikola Tesla). What kind of backwards thinking is this? Imagine the amount of talent that is crippled over the years by teaching children to be automatons instead of encouraging and supporting their unique skills, their strengths and what makes them different

Guys – I’m an Aussie living in Rome, at 22, 2years ago, after two Degrees, I just said cya later. I went into real living, one way ticket to Europe, and it means nothing more to me than to stumble onto your works and know that I am not alone. A tarot reader once told me I’m an old soul, but do you know how hard it is to find your purpose? I have no idea what my purpose is. I follow intuition and I strongly believe in fate, and the choices we make all come together eventually.. Anyway. Thank-you. You made my day big time.

Sorry for the delayed response (3 weeks haha), I didn’t get the notification of the comment on my dashboard. As a fellow Old Soul I can tell you finding your purpose in life is frightening and isolating. Once you remove yourself from the expectations of society and your parents, of what you should be doing, you’re left on your own, to create a new path, unexplored, uncharted. You don’t know where it will go, if somewhere meaningful or no where at all. But whatever comes to be, the act itself of trying to find a meaningful path is meaningful itself. It makes you feel like you’re being true to yourself, that you’re choosing not to live a lie and follow the crowd. Sooner or later you’ll find what that path is, trust me :)

Thanks for your comment. Reading up on many Eastern philosophies (Taoism and Buddhism) has helped me develop a greater understanding of the polarities and paradoxes that exist in our belief systems.

English philosopher A.C Grayling pointed out that being an atheist is simply not happening to believe, and isn’t a filter in the way a specific belief is. The trouble is, the word Atheist, sounds like it implies a belief (Theist) , but this is only because it unfairly defines itself in terms of the very thing it has no interest in: the belief in God. Being labelled an ‘atheist’ is a little like being labelled a ‘non-stamp-collector’. Most of us are non-stamp collectors but that says nothing about us or what we are like. We would probably find it odd to be called one, and it would be presumptuous and wrong of the stamp collectors to insist that by not collecting stamps we were bound by a hidden agenda.

If I created a club called the Oompa-Loompa-Believers and if you happened not to believe in them, the labeling of yourself as a non-Oompa-Loompa-Believer would in essence, require first a person to superficially believe in it (at least that such a imaginary concept like an Oompa-Loompa exists to begin with), before turning vehemently against it, not only that, but wanting others to disbelieve the imaginary concept as well.

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Walk the path less traveled

Our names are Aletheia Luna and Mateo Sol and we currently live in Perth, Western Australia.

Our mission is to help others embrace the path of the lone wolf and listen to the soul’s calling. Our goal is to provide a grounded and balanced perspective of spirituality that doesn’t bypass the raw, real, and messy aspects of spiritual growth or psychological development.

We are deeply drawn to exploring and exposing both the light and shadow side of human nature and spirituality. We strive towards integration, balance, wholeness, and embracing both the sacred and wild aspects of being human. Read more.